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Topic: Ruth Marie Milliman /Voted Out (Read 4478 times)

Ruth Marie Milliman was born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, where she enjoyed athletics and was actively involved in Little Theater and competitive ballroom dancing, along with singing in pageants and weddings. She graduated from T.L. Hanna High School.

In 1975, Milliman was crowned Miss Teenage Greenville and participated in Miss Teenage America. She then attended the University of South Carolina, where she eventually received a Bachelor of Science degree in criminal justice. While in college, she was a member of the Chi Omega sorority and was a cheerleader (she was head cheerleader for the squad in 1979). She also worked as a page for the South Carolina House of Representatives.

During her college years, Milliman was crowned the 1978 South Carolina Watermelon Queen and the 1979 Miss Cayce West Columbia. She attended the Miss South Carolina Pageant, in which she was voted Miss Photogenic by the press.

After graduating college, Milliman was hired by Eastern Airlines as a flight attendant. In 1981, she was appointed First Female Narcotics agent with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Agency and attended the South Carolina Police Academy.

For the past 19 years, Milliman has been involved with and employed in shopping center development. She is currently the Director of Retail Leasing for Centennial American Properties in Greenville, South Carolina.

Milliman has been running competitively since 1992 and holds many road race records in South Carolina. In 2001, she was awarded the YWCA Women in Sports Award. In 2003, she participated in the Marathon Des Sables, a race often called "the toughest footrace on the planet." The competition entails a seven day, 152-mile stage race. She finished second out of 59 women and placed 100th overall out of 677 runners. She was featured in an Emmy-nominated ESPN special about the race, titled "Foot Race Across the Sand."

Milliman is an active member of the PTA for Greenville High School and is a member of the Greenville High Booster Club. She was head coach for the Greenville Track Club Junior Olympic Youth Program for four years. She is also a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church.

Ruth Marie Milliman's Early Show InterviewTranscript by James Barber for SurvivorFever.net - 2.24.06

RENE: The La Mina tribe went to Tribal Council for the second time in a row, and in the end, the crumbling alliance of five wound up selling out one of its own members.

(video clips package)

RENE: Ruth Marie Milliman, good morning.

RUTH MARIE: Good morning.

RENE: I thought you showed such class when you exited from Tribal Council. You said goodbye to everybody, and these are the folks that stabbed you in the back.

RM: I know it! I know it. It was a little bit shocking. I had about a two-hour window where Dan had come to say, 'Oh my gosh, the vote has changed.' I was trying to work Terry, and you know, you're constantly trying to save yourself out there. So I had a little bit of window...

RENE: It's exhausting, isn't it?

RM: It's exhausting! (laughs) That's right.

RENE: Speaking of Dan, I mean he really had your back through and through. This is our Survivor Secret Scene, I want you to take a look and we'll talk about it in a moment.

RM: OK. Great.

[RUTH MARIE (solo): I had a conversation with Dan just to get some reassurance on our alliance, and he told me that the five of us have a solid agreement, no matter what.

DAN: If it costs us some bucks, well too bad. This thing is beyond 39 days. I'm planning to have some friends for the rest of my life.

RUTH MARIE: Right.

DAN: And that's just the way it's gonna be.

RUTH MARIE: Okay.

RUTH MARIE (solo):

So I think I have an agreement with four gentlemen who are stand-up guys. ]

RENE: Well...one of them turned out to be a stand-up guy. (Ruth Marie laughs) Who exactly do you blame for your being here? Is there any one person? Terry?

RM: OK, I just wanna run through this. I think Sally outgamed me. Sally wanted it so bad and she worked Austin - as you should on Survivor - for about a day and a half. So I think Sally outgamed. I think Austin kind of went back on me a little bit, but you can't really blame him for keeping a 27-year old. We're gonna cut him some slack on that.

RENE: Why? Why? Why? What are you saying here?

RM: Closer to his age, somebody for him to hang around with. I'm not gonna hold that against him.

RENE: I thought you both looked great out there.

RM: Well, thank you.

RENE: If it's a matter of who looks great in a bikini, you were holding your own out there.

RM: Thank you very much; I appreciate that. But I think in the end Terry was kind of calling the shots...you could hear last night where he was saying it wasn't a handshake on his part. You know it's been a while, maybe the third grade, since I've heard that, but it worked, it worked for him. (Rene laughs) Good for him.

RENE: Hey, Terry last night...speaking of which, he's on Exile Island. This is the big story, right...

RM: Right, right.

RENE: He's out there, he's digging around, he's got three or four clues, or what have you. He finds the idol. He finds immunity.

RM: I know.

RENE: Did you guys have any idea that he...

RM: I knew for certain he had the idol.

RENE: Really?

RM: Yeah. I think everybody probably knew, it was just too much jibber-jabber the way he was explaining it, and nobody was asking him directly, so I sort of sensed that everybody knew. I could be wrong, because I didn't discuss it with anybody, but I'm pretty certain of it.

RENE: You guys - somebody in your tribe last night said, 'Look, we're about three or four days from not even being able to lift our heads off the pillow.' You had no food for 11 days. When was the last time you went 11 days without food? You guys were really, really week.

RM: Right, right. We were lethargic, but you would have been amazed - the minute those challenges started, it was like everybody had eaten and was ready to go. It was pretty amazing, but I felt the same way. We had three or four more days until it was gonna get a little ugly.

RENE: Did you like it? Did you have a good time?

RM: Oh my gosh, Rene. It was the experience of a lifetime, and I've said this before to people, I've had many, many, many good experiences at my age, so it was amazing, truly amazing.

RENE: Was one of those experiences that you had in your lifetime as one of the great ones being crowned the Watermelon Queen in 1978 in South Carolina?

RM: Actually, that was one of the great ones, for certain.

RENE: What now for you? I read somewhere that you want to run across country. Is that true?

RM: I do. I was sort of working on this before I got cast for Survivor, so I'm going to continue pursuing it. What I would like to do is run across the United States, and folks have done that before, but I would like to run at least a marathon a day and never, ever get in a motorized vehicle.

RENE: 26 miles a day...

RM: At least.

RENE: For two-and-a-half months?

RM: Yes, that's what I'd like to do.

RENE: Wow. Well, listen, good luck with all that, because you're on your own on that.

RM: Thank you so much.

RENE: Ruth Marie Milliman, it's so good to meet you.

RM: Thank you.

RENE: And the older thing, the older women thing, I didn't buy that at all.

Ruth-Marie seemed to just be waiting on the sideline to see what would happen to her, but looks can be deceiving. What does she have to say about her strategy, the alliances she made, and whether or not she felt they all needed to “shake on it”? Was her age a factor in the game? And how does she think she got a little too comfortable? Ruth-Marie answers all these questions and more in this RealityNewsOnline interview!

What we saw of Ruth-Marie didn’t involve much proactive alliance-making. However, we know we don’t always get the whole truth in 44 minutes. Ruth-Marie sets the record straight here about her game play, and also discusses her thoughts on a variety of other questions.

RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Ruth-Marie, and thanks for taking the time to answer these questions for RealityNewsOnline readers. What was your original strategy coming into the game, and how did it change as you played?

Ruth-Marie: My original strategy was to stay flexible because I thought it would be a mistake to have a plan that didn’t allow me to change on a dime. Typically I get stronger as games go on but in this opportunity, I didn’t have the time to do that. We had to “game” pretty quickly with the four tribes of four people. I think that I formed my alliance with Cirie in probably an hour after we hit the beach and the same thing with Dan after the merge. In both cases, there wasn’t a lot of sitting around.

RNO: Given that we’re now down to one “older” woman in the game (I hate that term, by the way, since I’m older than both Melinda and Cirie!), how much of a factor do you think age plays in Survivor?

Ruth-Marie: I don’t think age in Survivor is a negative at all. It would be the same thing as saying someone who is 21 or 22 has an advantage. I think circumstances depends more on what tribe you are on and what people you are with but I don’t view age as a negative at all.

RNO: Considering the dire food situation your tribe was in, did the fact that Sally lost the fishing spear ever come up in discussions of who should be voted out?

Ruth-Marie: Prior to Misty’s departure, it certainly was discussed that Sally was going to be the one going home and part of the reason was due to the lost spear. In the game of Survivor, you are always looking for a reason to send people home. However, it was discussed that Misty “underperformed” a bit in the challenges that week therefore providing an opportunity for Sally to be saved.

RNO: Did you feel like you had any power at all within the tribe, or was it completely obvious that the decision was out of your hands?

Ruth-Marie: The decision with the young girls I didn’t feel was out of my hands and we were hoping to make it to the merge. I didn’t feel like there was a crack to overturn Terry’s decisions and he was the one ultimately calling the shots. It was in my best interest to stay with the original plan and make that work.

RNO: Looking back, what, if anything, do you think you could have done differently to change the outcome?

Ruth-Marie: The difference between Sally and I the last day and a half, she was slightly hungrier than me. And I broke the cardinal role of Survivor because I got a little too comfortable, especially with Terry being gone. It had nothing to do with laziness but I grew a bit more comfortable in the tribe. Possibly, I could have been working Nick as hard as Sally was working Austin because clearly she “outgamed” me with that decision.

RNO: What do you think of the rationalization that you only had a specific deal with Dan, not the whole alliance?

Ruth-Marie: I was never confused about that and neither was Dan or Nick. I think it would have been okay for Terry to say, “I changed my mind,” rather than say that we didn’t shake on it, which is a phrase that I hadn’t heard since the third grade.

RNO: Did you have an alliance with anyone on La Mina before your agreement with Dan this episode?

Ruth-Marie: I had an alliance with Dan within an hour of us hitting the beach. Before Misty’s outing, I had formed with this alliance with the four men and had personal conversations with Dan, Terry, and Nick.

RNO: How did your tribe stay so positive even when they had to vote people out?

Ruth-Marie: That was just the nature of the people on our tribe. I am certain that is how they behave in their real lives and there were no negative people on our tribe. They were the most positive group of people in general.

RNO: Did you have any idea that Terry had found the immunity idol?

Ruth-Marie: Yes. I was pretty sure that he had found it. Terry is the kind of person that when he did something special or unique, he liked to share that with everyone and though he didn’t say it outright, it was fairly obvious on his face.

RNO: Is there anything else you’d like to tell RealityNewsOnline readers about your time on Survivor?

Ruth-Marie: I just like to say it was the best experience that I’ve had in my life and I’ve had a lot of good experiences thus far. I was not expecting these people to have such an impact on my life in such a short amount of time. I would say that everyone who is cast in this game is remarkable. You definitely get this sense that you are in some special company.

Handpicked by Terry and Co. to round out the male-dominated La Mina alliance, Ruth Marie Milliman remained nothing but loyal to her tribe mates, but once Sally's athleticism was deemed a more valuable asset, her fate was sealed. Milliman may have been quiet during her stint on CBS' Survivor: Panama — Exile Island (Thursdays at 8 pm/ET), but the South Carolina native and mother of two made up for it when TVGuide.com tracked her down the day after she said goodbye to her tribe.

TVGuide.com: As hard as it was, you must have sensed your exit was coming — especially once La Mina discussed putting you on the chopping block the week before last.Ruth Marie Milliman: I had an alliance with the guys, so I wasn't in jeopardy then. The ultimate decision came down to Sally and Misty. Sally was going to go, but at the last minute it changed to Misty.

TVGuide.com: Do you feel your ultimate fate would have been different had you been on Casaya and not subject to the guys' alliance?Ruth Marie: Possibly, you never know. It appeared that the women got a little bit more say-so over there. We were having to follow protocol because of the type of leadership we had, but their camp may have been stressful in a completely different way.

TVGuide.com: What were your initial feelings when Dan suggested you'd be a good fit for the guys' alliance?Ruth Marie: I went to Dan about an alliance during the first hour we were on the beach. I had to. He went to discuss it with Terry and I also discussed it with Terry. It was probably about 24 hours later that they absolutely committed to it. I was thrilled, because they could have said no. Had they said no, I would have gone with the girls and we could have tried to make our own alliance.

TVGuide.com: In the previous episode, Sally explained how she felt isolated at camp after Misty's departure. Did the La Mina women have a special bond?Ruth Marie: That tribe was the "love tribe." I wish those two girls could live with me — that's the kind of bond we have. There are absolutely no hard feelings or anything. Honestly, the way the alliance was set up, I didn't have to be mean or backstab them. That was all kind of coming from Terry.

TVGuide.com: Misty told me your tribe sang at night to keep busy.Ruth Marie: We would sing, play games... anything to pass the time. There were very few unpleasant moments, if any, at our camp.

TVGuide.com: In the reward challenge, La Mina took an early lead, but once it came time to assemble the puzzle pieces floating in the ocean, things fell apart. What happened? Ruth Marie: Um, actually... I'm not certain we had all the right pieces. [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: Oh, really! Did you realize that while you were working on the puzzle?Ruth Marie: I can't say it with certainty, but a certain person may have brought me the wrong piece. Most of those challenges are so close. On occasion, one is a runaway, but most of them are so close.

TVGuide.com: Do you remember how long it took you to complete that puzzle?Ruth Marie: It's quicker than it looks on television, because everybody's motivated to go so fast. I can't imagine it taking more than seven minutes. Maybe 10.

TVGuide.com: When Casaya chose Terry to head to Exile Island, the tribe seemed distraught over his 48-hour departure. Austin seemed especially worried about there being no one to take charge while he was gone.Ruth Marie: I didn't feel that was the case at all. Maybe Austin was the only one who did. We definitely produced a pretty smooth camp life under Terry, but any one of us could have been the leader.

TVGuide.com: Once Terry returned from what Shane deemed "hell," he said no one really asked him about the immunity idol. At that point, did you believe he had it?Ruth Marie: I thought he had the idol just by the way he was talking about it. You could tell he had something to be proud of. I'm sensing the others thought he had it, too, but I can't say that for sure.

TVGuide.com: Looking back at the immunity challenge, did Austin take any heat for transporting the water buckets to you too slowly? Ruth Marie: No, because there are so many things that go into those challenges. Nick had asked to pour the water because he wasn't feeling good. Had I been able to take his place, being smaller and lower to the ground, maybe I would have done a little better than some of the taller guys.

TVGuide.com: After dining on tribal dishes like snail soup, what was your first "real" meal after coming home from Survivor?Ruth Marie: The first thing that I had when I came out of the game was sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. Then I just remember dipping chocolate in peanut butter. Then I remember vomiting all night! [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: What does your family think about your time on the show? Your kids must think you're quite a cool mom!Ruth Marie: Your kids think you're a dork no matter what you do. But they got to observe me doing something that may teach them when they're older to step out of the box and experiment a little. They've had a lot of fun with it. All their friends are throwing parties. It's been awesome.

TVGuide.com: Viewing parties sound like fun. Have there been any scenes you wish hadn't made it to the air? Anything you wish we had seen?Ruth Marie: I definitely wish they would have taken out all those scenes of me in the bathing suit! I wish there had been more scenes of me gaming, because I was a little bit mute for my personality.

TVGuide.com: Might fans see you pop up in any additional reality shows in the future?Ruth Marie: Well, gosh, I hope so! Maybe they'll do a Survivor: All Stars for people who got voted off. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Bring me back!